


Never Drink Alone

by litra



Series: one more drink and then I'm gone [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Prison Break
Genre: Crossover, Drinking, Gen, Plans, possibly but not really drunken halucinations, they each need someone to talk to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-06 19:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10342905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litra
Summary: Len finds Michael on his way to getting drunk and decides to join him. They both have things they don't want to deal with, and who better to commiserate then yourself from another timeline.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set pre-season 1 for Prison Break, and post episode 7 season 1 for Legends, after Len abandoned Mick.

Michael wasn’t a drinker. He’d have a glass of something occasionally to celebrate or relax, but this, where he was now, it wasn’t really him and he knew it.

“Well, it’s not Saints and Sinners, but it’ll do.”

The man sat down next to him and Michael glared first at the man, then at the five shot glasses turned over on the bar. The alcohol was clearly affecting him but not in the way he’d hoped.

“Who are you?”

“My face didn’t give it away?” The stranger took the shot out of Michael’s hand and knocked it back. His eyebrows rose, as he looked at the empty glass. “I always did have good taste, but if you’re aiming to get drunk, you’re wasting very good whiskey to do it.

“What is this, why do you look…”

“Like you? Because I am you, just from another when and where. There’s a lot of temporal mechanics involved, but I don’t really get it and I’m not drunk off my ass.”

Michael rolled his head back on his shoulders, closing his eyes as he tried to force the tension in his neck away.  He’d been hoping the drink would help with that. He’d been hoping the drink would help with a lot of things. So far it had only made his hands more clumsy, and materialized a doppelganger of himself.

“If I’m going to drink myself into a stupor while talking to a figment of my imagination, could you at least pick someone else to look like, Link maybe.” The last two words were mumbled. Fuck, he couldn’t even be open about how much he missed his brother to a drunken hallucination. How fucked up was he?

“Who?”

He glanced over at his mirror self, trying to judge if he just wanted him to say it again or if this was something deeper. He looked down at the row of shot glasses. After the day he’d had it was all in, or walk away now.

Well he’d never been one to walk away, and he wasn’t going to hide from his own mind.

“My Brother.” Michael reached for his wallet. The photo was from the newspaper article on the court case. He hadn’t had a real photo of Linc in years now, too long.

His copy leaned over to see, “Ah, Mick, what happened?”

“They’re going to kill him. He’s getting the chair. I said I didn’t believe him….”  

The stranger's face did something odd, his eyes narrowing and his lips thinning. It took him a minute to realize that’s how his own face looks when he’s calculating angles and weight, all the structure of things. Determined to make it all fit, even if he has to break it all down to it’s component parts to do it.

“But,” The stranger coaxed.

“Now I do. He’s innocent.” For some reason that got a short laugh out of his hallucination. Maybe he needed a shrink if his own subconscious doubted him. “He’s done a lot of things, but he didn’t kill that guy.”

The guy glanced at him sideways with another of his own looks, “Yeah okay. So what are you going to do about it?”

And that’s the question wasn't it. That's why he was here in this hotel bar drinking alone on a Tuesday night. Because he had an idea, and it was a crazy idea, the kind of thing you couldn’t half ass, couldn’t change your mind on later. The kind of idea that he couldn’t possibly act on if he was going to have any regrets.

“What would you do?”

“I’m not sure I’m the person to ask.”

Michael considered that and decided it was probably a stupid question anyway. It’s kind of a rhetorical question since he’d asking himself. The copy was raising his hand though, signaling the bartender for more shots. Could he do that?

“Who are you?” He asked again, because yeah the guy definitely didn’t answer that question the first time around.

“Call me Len,”

Michael took the offered hand on reflex, “Michael.”

“Yeah, I know.” Len looked pointedly down at the wallet he’d never put away. His driver's license stared up at him.

Len downed the first of the new shots, then ran his finger around the rim. “Mick, he’s not my brother like your,” He nodded at the picture, “but he was my partner.”

“Was?” something inside Michael seized up.

Len pulled Michael's shot across the bar and stared at it as he shook his head. “I screwed up.” He picked it up, hesitated for a short moment, then swallowed it down. “He’s always had a temper. Hothead” And for some reason that got another bark of humorless laughter. “But he listened to me. I could cool him down.”

“But,”

“But he stopped listening to me. We were working with this team, and it rubbed him the wrong way. He thought I’d forgotten the first rule.”

Michael raised an eyebrow.

“The score. We never did jobs for revenge, or vendettas, or any other personal reason. It’s about the money and it has to stay that way. Keeps everything clearer. It’s my rule, but this time... Maybe he’s right. Maybe I got caught up in the hows and forgot the whys. I crossed a line. Lost his trust, and he already didn’t trust the rest of the team.” He turned the shot glass over and lined it up with the others.

Whether it was the drink or just that this guy was starting to sound different enough to be real, he had to ask the question.

“What did you do?”

“I cut him out. The rest of the team… they think he’s dead.”

“But he’s not.”

“And I don’t know if what I did was worse.”

They both moved to signal the bartender at the same time. Two more shots were poured and this time they lifted them at the same time.

“And yet I’m not the one who set out to get drunk,” Len said when the burn was starting to fade.

“Link’s on death row. I was talking to him today and he… he said something...”

Len studied him. “Something that got the wheels spinning?”

“Maybe.”

Len studied him for another minute, before nodding, “Okay.” He stood and pulled out a wallet of his own. He counted out twenties as the bartender came over. “Another bottle, and clear the tab.”

Michael leaned back, started to wobble on the stool, and caught himself. “What?”

“There are rules,” Len said, “I may have disregarded the first rule, but not the others. So we’re going to go back to your room, or apartment or somewhere you know is safe, and you’re going to tell me this idea you have and I’m going to tell you if it’s worth your partner's life or not.” He shrugged on his coat, a parka that should have been too heavy for this time of year.

“Why?”

“Because the wheels won't stop spinning if you get drunk. And I never make a plan where it can be overheard.” He picked up the bottle.

Michael looked at the line of shot glasses. His doppelganger was right about one thing. The wheels were spinning. He stood up.

 

\---

 

Michael woke to the sun in his eyes and a hangover fit to kill an elephant. He managed to stumble to the bathroom, and left the lights off as he ran the shower, first hot then cold in turn.

A dream, or hallucination…. he vaguely remembered talking late into the night, finishing off the bottle while planning out something that no sane and rational upstanding citizen would even contemplate. Except apparently he wasn’t quite so upstanding if his brain came up with a doppelganger who was a thief and possibly a killer. A man who’s first thought on hearing his idea, was to say it was possible, but that he wasn’t taking it far enough. It wasn’t just about getting out, there had to be a plan to stay out, to stay safe, and what if something went wrong….

Michael cane out of the shower with a towel around his waist and looked at the blank wall. They’d taken down his pictures last night. Now they were propped up by the door. The empty bottle was in the sink.

A single yellow sticky note was in the middle of the empty space.

“Had to run. Your notes are on your phone, in case you don’t remember the details. You can save him."

It wasn’t signed, but then, it didn’t need to be.

Michael looked at the empty wall, and wondered if it was big enough. After all, he had a lot to do.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've had this idea in my head since i started watching Prison Break, because you know who has experience breaking people out of prisons? Len. And why would Michael jump to breaking him out when he's spent his whole life trying to get out of that world. Okay I know it's not quite that simple, but a little push doesn't hurt.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Never Drink Alone [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10825800) by [litrapod (litra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litrapod), [luvtheheaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvtheheaven/pseuds/luvtheheaven)




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